Dr. Colarusso's Adult Development Blog

There can be no friendship where there is no freedom.Friendship loves a free air, and will not be fenced up in straight and narrow enclosures."William Penn

A Definition of Friendship Defining friendship is not an easy matter, possibly because the subject is too broad to be encompassed by a single statement. What follows is a definition that I feel comes close to capturing the essence of what is involved in such relationships.

Friendship is an extra-familiar relationshipbased on mutuality, equality and freedom of choicein which the expression of sexual and aggressiveimpulses is predominately inhibited.

Like all other relationships, friendships are influenced by strong conscious and unconscious wishes and feelings. By limiting friendships to extra-familial relationships this definition rules out many significant interactions in which friendly feelings occur—such as those between lovers (heterosexual or homosexual) spouses, parents and children, and siblings. This exclusion is made because the essential nature of those interactions is determined by both the direct expression of sexual impulses (lovers and spouses) or by inequality and the absence of choice (parents and children, and siblings).

Picture two nine-year-old girls twirling a jump rope together. A third girl deftly leaps into the space vacated by the revolving cord and dodges it effortlessly as it skips by. The harmonious synchronization of bodies is amplified by the repetition of a simple, rap-like verse: “First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes Jane with a baby carriage.” Although the girls pay little attention to the meaning of their words, they’re expressing a culturally dictated plan for their future. Love! Marriage! Parenthood! Even though in today’s world, the three don’t necessarily come in that order. Create the next generation and nurture it within the loving confines of the family. And in the process, enrich yourself, the parent, in the most unimaginable ways.

Separating and IndividuatingThe gradual psychological separation of children from their parents begins in infancy and at that time is a rather exclusive affair between infant and parent. The process of moving away and becoming more independent continues throughout early childhood. Take, for example, the toddler whose favorite word is “no” and who insists on feeding himself or herself, smearing as much as they may eat. During the elementary school years children spend much of the day with new adults and friends, have their own ideas about everything from clothes to sports teams, and begin to compare their parents with those of their friends. And if that’s not enough, here comes adolescence! During the years from twelve to twenty the psychological and physical separation from parents becomes boisterous, or worse, as the adolescent bursts out of the confines of the nuclear family to love and be loved by others.

Ultimate Phallic Symbol“Dad, can I have the car tonight?” said seventeen-year-old Scott, somewhat apprehensively.

“What? Wait ‘til I finish this paragraph.” When I finally looked up from the evening paper, Scott half-whispered, with just a touch of exasperation in his voice, “I said, can I have the car tonight?”

“Scott, you have your own car. What are you asking me for, out of gas again? Here’s a couple of. . .” I never got to finish the sentence. Looking very uncomfortable and shifting from foot to foot, all six feet of him looming over me, “Dad, I don’t need any money. I wondered if I could, ah, borrow the Mustang tonight?”

My Dad never talked much about sex. He rarely gave me any indication of what he thought about the subject, let alone how he behaved sexually as an adolescent or young adult. From time to time, I’d hear suspicious sounds emanating from my parents’ bedroom. Once at a family picnic, he laughingly positioned two soft balls at his crotch but dropped them just before the photographer snapped a group photo. When I was eleven and increasingly aware of my own stirrings, I invaded his room and found three Trojan condoms (I can still picture the soldiers’ helmets)and some dirty playing cards.

But when I became pubertal and my clothes were transparent, exposing my pulsating, hairy body for all the world to see, my father still said nothing. I struggled on, in pain and pleasure, alone.

He let me bungle my way through high school, too, watching me play the fool over and over again as I fell madly in lust with a mixture of braids, braces and breasts. Even when I really fell in love and went steady, he had little to say. If he noticed that two Trojan soldiers, never actually used in battle during those years, were missing from his bureau arsenal, he never let on.

For many men hunting is a passion, a right, a way of life. For their young sons, the long-awaited first invitation to accompany Dad and his friends into the winter woods is more cherished than a bar mitzvah or a confirmation. Bagging your first buck is as important a gauge of emerging masculinity as losing your virginity. In fact, one sometimes follows the other. I remember at age thirteen listening wide-eyed to two seventeen-year-old neighbors describing their first visit to Kitty’s the local whorehouse. It happened on the way home from a hunting trip during which both boys had kidded their first deer.

Just before reaching the outskirts of town the proud fathers announced that they had a surprise—the trip would be topped off by a visit to Kitty’s. “Quite a double header,” they laughed. When the car turned into the Kitty’s driveway, the roof draped with its twin cargos of carrion crusted in frozen blood, silken-dressed hussies introduced the young heroes to another kind of kill.

When I was a little boy I waited for the first day of hunting season more expectantly than Christmas. I loved to watch my Dad get out his boots, sharpen the blade of his hunting knife and polish his gun until it shone and glistened. When the big day arrived I’d lie in bed, afraid to sleep for fear I’d miss the loud ring of the alarm clock at 2 a.m. We’d get up together, quietly, so as not to wake up Mom, shivering in the cold. I’d watch Dad pull on his long underwear and socks and clip on the broad, red suspenders that he only wore on this occasion. I loved the smell of the hot coffee in the cold kitchen as I begged him to let me go along.

“Maybe next year,” he always said, and then he was gone. As I stood at the door I’d hear the crunch of the tires on the gravel driveway and stand there until the taillights faded into the distance. “Yeah, maybe next year,” I sighed.

Cougar is a slang term that refers to a woman who seeks sexual relations with considerably younger men. This book deals with the dynamics and motivations of older women who seduce younger men as portrayed in 6 classical films.

Nearly everyone is familiar with the classic film The Graduate in which Anne Bancroft, as the famous Mrs. Robinson, seduces the recent college graduate Benjamin, played by Dustin Hoffman. The film has become part of our culture and has been immortalized by the Simon and Garfunkel song that plays throughout the film.

I know what you’re thinking. Sex after forty, the best you ever had—either this guy is on something or he doesn’t know much about sex. Humor me, will you. Read on. You can always stick to your initial opinion, but the information in this book might change your mind.

Many misinformed skeptics believe that the quest for sexual intimacy after 40 is an exercise in futility. One guy in his mid-forties lamented, “My body has changed so much since I was twenty. And it’s going down hill every day. What do I have to look forward to?” Obviously, I think the answer to that question can be “Plenty! The best sex you ever had—if the biology and psychology of the middle years are understood.”

And I even thought this before Viagra was available.

My definition of intimacy isn’t grandiose either. I define intimacy as the ability to care for the partner at least as much as the self, some of the time. No impossible or unrealistic expectation there. Does that sound like you? How do you like having equal billing with your partner? Of course, sex definitely occurs without intimacy, and intimacy can occur without sex.

In this post my focus is on developing the ability to fuse the two frequently, in the face of what may appear to be daunting midlife obstacles.

The term midlife crisis has become a cliché, the subject of movies, Oprah and Geraldo television shows, back yard gossip, and dinner-table conversation. But it is also a term used by serious professionals to describe a dramatic, relatively uncommon form of midlife psychopathology experienced by certainly less than 10% of the population.

A person in the midst of a true crisis acts suddenly and impulsively, throwing away relationships and careers that often took many years to build in a frantic attempt to escape what has become unbearable. Reason is abandoned and advice from spouses, relatives, friends—and therapists—to stop and think before making major decisions and burning bridges falls on deaf ears, so intense is the urge to escape from the intolerable present. One woman described her husband’s midlife crisis as “the death of our family.”

IntroductionIf you believe, as I do, that we continue to evolve and change throughout life, including what I reluctantly call old age—I think a better term is late adulthood—then we can expect that the experience of fatherhood (not becoming a father, although that happens, too) will be dynamic and dramatic.

Of course, we bring the past with us as we move through life, but we should not underestimate the power of the present, particularly after 50. For the purposes of our discussion, let’s define late adulthood as the years after 60 or 65. Even though at 76, I feel more like 30.

Like all relationships, fatherhood is not a static experience, nor is it easily described, since one can become a father at 13 or 83, to say nothing of the fact that biological fatherhood cannot be equated with psychological fatherhood and that fathers come into being through intercourse or adoption and may be straight or gay. I’m going to focus primarily on the developmental experience of most fathers, those who became biological parents in their twenties or thirties and became grandfathers and great-grandfathers a generation or two later.

By so doing, I hope to strip the mask from the stereotypical description of the elderly father and grandfather as passive, benign, a bit senile and inconsequential.

Playing peek-a-boo, hopscotch or baseball; listening to rock and roll, Sondheim, or Sebelius; reading romance novels or watching a Shakespearian play—what do they all have in common? All are expressions of one of the most ubiquitous and intriguing human activities—play. And you thought playing was something that kids and a few adults who never grew up did. Actually, play is not random, carefree action, free from the restraints of more mundane human pursuits. Like all other thought and behavior, play is molded by the forces of the mind and the environment into nearly endless forms that fascinate us from shortly after birth until the end of life.

Do Adults Play?The lifestyle of some adults might, at first glance, suggest a negative response to that question. So would the thinking of some philosophers and the actions of many adults. Kids play, but adults work. Nose to the grindstone. Support the family, etc. But if that’s the case, how do we explain adult activities such as chess, cards and the enormous involvement in spectator sports? In order to understand why adults play, we need to consider the motivations that prompt this universal form of human expression and discuss its characteristics in both childhood and adulthood.

In the midst of my 76th year of life my thoughts have increasingly turned to what I have learned about the human condition. I’ve wondered about the purpose of life and thought about what are the basic ingredients that lead to happiness and fulfillment. Of course, these are only one man’s views. And, in addition, I’ve lived my life, as many of you have, in the First World; and thus have not experienced significant deprivation or want of the basic necessities of life. What I have learned may have little or no relevance for billions who have spent their lives in extreme poverty or under conditions of extreme violence.

As I contemplated what is responsible for my life view two factors came to mind immediately. The first is my fifty years of exposure to psychiatric and psychoanalytic thinking, practice, writing and teaching. My life view is inextricably linked to the thousands of hours I have spent in the extended psychological and emotional intimacy with children and adults that characterizes work as a therapist. What a profound privilege, to be allowed to share the innermost thoughts, feelings, pains and joys of other human beings. I can think of no other profession that allows such access or provides such satisfaction. As I listened, decade after decade, without fully realizing how I was being transformed by the experience, I developed a deep understanding of, and love for, the human condition; of the forces from within which drive us, of the relationships that shape us and of the life long vulnerability to acts of fate which are beyond our control and have the power to shatter our stability, our very existence, at a moment’s notice.

The second major factor that has influence by life view is my personal experience. I’ve had the good luck to have lived 76 years without experiencing any major physical illnesses or impairments. I was fortunate enough to be born into a large, extended, Italian immigrant family. I was loved and nurtured as a child by two caring parents who, like my wife’s parents, had been married more than 50 years when they died. Wading my way through the rapids of adolescence, of young love and lust, I had the good fortune, some would say dumb luck, to eventually marry a beautiful young woman who during the course of our 52 years together has shared with me the joys and pains of daily life, struggled with me in a loving way, and at the age of 77 has become a most extraordinary person in her own right.

We have raised our children, now middle-aged; shared the pleasures and pains of our grand children and endured the death of our parents. Friends and colleagues have enriched our lives and we have had the extreme good fortune to live in a nation that is free and democratic.

My personal travails, which I had the opportunity to work through in my own therapy and in the thousands of hours of listening to my fellow human beings, my patients, struggle with similar issues; are like yours, and theirs. Before moving into my personal philosophy, a few definitions may be relevant to provide a framework in which to proceed.

Definitions The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (Houghton Mifflin, 1969, p. 985) defines philosophy as “love and pursuit of wisdom by intellectual means and moral self-discipline. . .the investigation of causes and laws underlying reality.” I could not have defined the purpose of this presentation better. I have investigated the causes and laws underlying reality and have attempted to become wise through the use of intellectual means and self-discipline. This definition of philosophy also sounds a lot like the use of the psychotherapeutic method to bring about a successful therapeutic result. A good therapeutic result certainly involves the patient feeling happy and fulfilled.

The same dictionary describes fulfillment as “to bring into actuality, to measure up to, to satisfy.” Happiness is defined as “having or demonstrating pleasure or satisfaction.” In a very simple way I’m saying that my life experience has led me to conclude that the goal of life is happiness and fulfillment through childhood and adulthood as each of us struggles with the developmental tasks of whatever particular phase of life we happen to be in; and the emergence of wisdom as we mature. I will use wisdom and maturity somewhat interchangeably in this presentation. As I am using them both words refer to the understanding of the human condition that gradually increases as one moves through the life cycle, hopefully reaching a pinnacle of awareness, acceptance and insight in late adulthood.

My Understanding of the Human Condition This is what I’ve learned about the human condition thus far in my life. Understanding what we are as individuals and collectively are all about, regardless of culture, is essential to developing a fulfilling philosophy of life.

The wise individual learns from the past and is fully engaged in the present. Equally important, he or she anticipates the future and makes the decisions necessary to enhance prospects for health and happiness. In other words, a philosophy of life has been developed, one that includes an understanding—and acceptance—of the person’s place in the order of human existence. It is my belief that a world view, which integrates these ideas (but still varies widely from individual to individual) may produce happiness and fulfillment when the following aspects of the human condition are accepted and integrated.

The body must be cared for—in health through regular checkups, exercise, and a healthy diet; and in sickness through prompt treatment and proper care. Paying attention to the body is not an end in and of it self, but is critically important because sentience and emotion, the essence of human experience, spring from a healthy body and brain.

Human beings are individuals alone with themselves, separated and individuated from all others. The most basic human experience is to be alone. For the immature this isolation may feel like a prison, cold and depriving; for the mature individual reveling in an inner world of thought and emotion, being alone is a palace of inexhaustible richness and pleasure.

Paradoxically, human beings cannot survive or develop on their own. As the psychoanalytic developmental theory of infancy and childhood clearly demonstrates, we are helpless at birth and relatively dependent throughout childhood. All of us, even as adults, require the sustaining presence of others. We exist in a framework of interdependence, a basic characteristic of all human relationships; be it the parental view of the child as a confirmation of his or her sexuality, the need of the child for the parents’ loving care and protection, or the reversal of these roles between adult child and aging progenitor. The mature adult, unlike the child who takes, uses, controls, and attempts to dominate; mutes the grandiose expectations of childhood and propels the self toward interactions characterized by caring and mutuality, thus striking a balance between personal needs and those of others.

Change is a constant in life. Nothing stays the same or lasts forever. A basic aspect of that change is the shifting nature of significant relationships. Involvement with loved ones such as children, parents, colleagues and friends is in constant realignment. Healthy marriages deepen in significant while others break up on the shoals of midlife development. Parents die. Children, grow, leave, and return with new family members who replace parents in significance and importance. The task of the mature person is to sort out, categorize, and set priorities among relationships, in the process balancing emotional needs and realistic demands and responsibilities. The shifting nature of relationships stimulates the achievement of greater maturity by forcing a constant redefinition of one’s relationship to others. Mature individuals mourn for lost relationships but are able to remain focused on current and future ones.

All human beings--regardless of wealth, position, power, achievement, appearance or cultural background—are on the same developmental course. All are born and all will die. All have a body with the same functions. All have the same emotional needs for closeness and love and the same vulnerability to loss and deprivation. Recognition of this fact heightens respect for everyone and to a small degree diminishes the impact of social and economic inequities.

Further, few individuals have an exaggerated importance. The wish for grandiose prominence is universal, the result of the un-tempered narcissism of infancy and childhood which remains, to varying degrees, in all of us. In reality most individuals are important to themselves and a relatively small number of others who know and love them. The mature individual accepts this fact without despair and uses the knowledge to set realistic goals and priorities which may result in increased happiness and fulfillment.

Personal time is limited. Everyone will die. Young children do not have the cognitive capacity to understand personal death. Spurred on by the thrust of physical and cognitive maturation, and a seemingly endless future; adolescents and young adults think and act as though they are immortal. The true acceptance of time limitation and personal death occurs in midlife. Then the mature individual, religious or not, stimulated by an awareness of the aging process in the body, the maturation of children, the death of parents and friends, and the arrival of grandchildren; accepts the inevitability of a personal end. As with the realization of the limited importance of each individual in nature’s grand design, this painful recognition, which precipitates panicked midlife crises in some, stimulates others to seek fulfillment in each moment, to define what is truly important, and to plan the future with the goal of actualizing those priorities.

Money and possessions have limited intrinsic value. They are a means to an end, tools for enriching life and improving the human condition of loved ones and the broader community. Further, ownership of tangible objects is temporary. Sooner or later they will be lost, left behind, or given to others.

Work occupies a central position in adult life. Considered drudgery by some, the wise person recognizes its extraordinary value. In addition to the obvious function of earning a living; work is organizing, an activity that provides purpose and direction, a meaningful way to manage time, and an environment in which to form sustaining relationships. Play is equally important, providing great pleasure and at the same time a means of mastering stresses and developmental challenges at any time of life. Both work and play will be discussed further later in this presentation.

Middle and late adulthood are the stages of life in which the experience of being human can be realized and enjoyed most fully because of the combination of physical and emotional health, power and prestige in the work place, accumulation of wealth and possessions and the presence of meaningful, multi-generational relationships. The potential exists for a life overflowing with richness and complexity; one in which the triumvirate of human experiences—love, work, and play—can be successfully balanced. When one has been fortunate enough to experience such richness, death can be met with feelings of acceptance, and even satisfaction, the natural end-point of human existence that follows a lifetime well lived and well loved.

The four Essential ComponentsOf Happiness and Fulfillment The observations of the human condition that I’ve just described have led me to conclude that four essential components are present when individuals live life fully and experience happiness and fulfillment. They are: Physical and Mental Health Human happiness and fulfillment are built on a solid foundation of good physical and mental health. Physical health increases the ability to function in the world in the relative absence of pain and impairment and most importantly, provides an internal environment in which the brain can function optimally. Human thought and emotion originate in the brain and are totally dependent on brain function for existence. The mind resides within the physical body which profoundly effects mental life and development throughout life as it matures in childhood and ages in adulthood. Thus, caring for the body is absolutely essential to the maintenance and enhancement of sentience, the essence of human existence. We live in our bodies. Our mental life is totally linked to our physical being, but we ARE our thoughts and emotions.

Mental health, which may be roughly defined for the purposes of this presentation as the absence of significant mental illness—we are all neurotic to one degree or another-- allows the individual to experience the inner world as a palace rather than a prison and to experience genuine intimacy in relationships with others. For those who are victims of biologically based mental illnesses, and for those who suffer from crippling and pleasure-robbing neuroses or worse forms of psychologically determined pathology, the quest for happiness and fulfillment may be difficult or impossible to achieve.

Emotional Intimacy We come into the world alone and leave it alone. But in the decades in between birth and death we live in a state of interdependence with others. When those relationships promote mental and emotional development the result is emotional intimacy. Because we remain vulnerable to the attitudes and actions of those individuals with whom we are interdependent, these very same relationships can, and do, cause us to experience pain, rejection and abandonment throughout our lives. There is nothing more exquisitely human than to be both emotionally enriched by those we love and need and at the same time continually vulnerable to the pain which their insensitive words and actions, whether intended or not, may cause. Living on this razor edge of pain and pleasure is life long and experienced differently as we mature and age. Consider the following: the rapturous fusion of the infant with a loving mother or the total disintegrating despair caused by maternal rejection or abandonment. the toddler’s elation as experienced within a loving, mother-child, symbiotic dyad or the terrifying experience of angry voices or physical abandonment during a true temper tantrum. the empowering grandiosity, when accepted benignly, of the fivde-year-old child’s challenge and the verbal or physical retaliation of the insecure parent. the enormously satisfying feeling of acceptance by the elementary school peer group and the cruel rejection of the child who is thought to be different. the dream-like perfection of the first adolescent infatuation verses the total despair of the inevitable first rejection. the joy of sharing the miracle of parenthood with a spouse and the crushing pain of separation from children associated with divorce. the tender intimacy of caring for aging parents and the pain experienced when they die. The joyous generativity related to giving and relating to younger individuals and the jarring pain associated with the realization that all will be lost through death.

In addition to organizing our lives, relationships that lead to intimacy, stability and fulfillment occur in varying degrees of intensity. The nature of these relationships may be conceptualized in the form of concentric circles. At the center is involvement with spouse and children. In the next concentric ring are relationships with parents and extended family, followed in the third concentric ring by interactions with friends, co-workers and neighbors. As we get further away from the warmth and sustenance provided by those who love and care about us, we are defined, and to a degree sustained, by the realization that we share all aspects of human experience with members of our particular nation and culture and the seven billion others who currently inhabit this planet.

Work Meaningful work is presented here as an essential ingredient which is necessary for happiness and fulfillment. In other words, work is a good thing, not something to be minimized and avoided.

The capacity for work begins to develop in the second and third years of life as parents introduce toilet training and other limit-setting experiences. As parents repeatedly say “No!” and frustrate the toddler’s wish for total freedom, replace chaos with order and impose routines and restrictions; they help the child to begin to tolerate frustration, delay gratification, and establish the capacity to control mind and body—essential components of a mature capacity to work and of happiness.

As they interact with their child around his or her “jobbies” (stools) and gently insist on adherence to societal demands for bowel and bladder control and cleanliness, parents facilitate the emergence of a core of strength which forms the basis on which the ability to work is built. Character emerges out of toilet training and other limit setting processes. As Anna Freud described it, “In short, what takes place in this period is the far-reaching modification and transformation of the {personality} which—if kept within normal limits—supply the individual personality with a background of highly desirable, valuable qualities.” (1965, pp. 77).

During the preschool years ambition and initiative, then directed primarily toward parental competitors, are integrated into the future worker’s armamentarium. To quote Erikson, “while autonomy concentrates on keeping potential rivals out, and therefore, can lead to jealous rage most often directed against encroachments by younger sibling, initiative brings with it anticipatory rivalry with those who have been there first and may, therefore, occupy with their superior equipment, the field toward which one’s initiative is directed.” (1963, p. 255). Success in the workplace is predicated on the ability to face potential rivals and challenges, to work with and learn from those with “superior equipment”, and to direct one’s initiative beyond the limits imposed by current-day procedures and knowledge. The child who successfully traverses these years is at the same time internalizing the capacities and characteristics required for success and fulfillment in the workplace.

The elementary school years are the first interval in which children in Western society are expected to work. Their form of work is contained in the work in homework. In order to be a successful worker-learner, many capabilities must be present to meet the demands of the school-workplace. These capacities also form the nucleus of the skills required by the adult worker including the ability to comfortably control the body and utilize its potential; to modulate gratification and frustration and remain focused on a task for increasingly long intervals; to possess intellectual skills, and to relate to peers and superiors in a manner which facilitates accomplishment and productivity. All of these characteristics emerge in the elementary school classroom. Erikson recognized the importance placed on work as a future expectation when he described the developmental dilemma of the elementary school years as industry versus inferiority. (1963, p. 255). When a child succeeds in the classroom the newly internalized conscience becomes “loving and beloved” (Shafer, 1960) in response to work and achievement. Such an individual is self-motivated, focuses and goal oriented, continually responding to a powerful inner compass that directs him or her toward higher levels of achievement. These are the qualities which twenty years later produce outstanding academic achievement, new discoveries, the guts to begin a new business and satisfaction in the work place.

Adolescence is the first phase of development in which work is performed in actual jobs in the economy for compensation. The desire to partake of the pleasures of adolescent/adult life, necessity and parental insistence push adolescents into the work force where, for the most part, they earn money and learn about the demands and expectations connected with work. When necessity requires that adolescents work they quickly learn about the demands and limitations of employment and are usually forced into low paying jobs that provide valuable experience but also detract from time which could be more profitably (in every sense of that word) spent on studies, preparing for the future when educational credentials literally translate into dollars, a high standard of living, and meaningful, fulfilling work. Whatever the reason may be that causes adolescents to enter the work force, by mid-adolescence, or earlier, they have developed the physical, emotional and cognitive capacities necessary to perform the same work functions as adults.

Work becomes a central, often dominant, activity in young adulthood. When the childhood developmental line leading to adult work is relatively conflict free, there is a relatively smooth transition from high school to on-the-job training or college and beyond. The transition from learning and play to adult work may be gradual or abrupt, but at some point in the late teens or twenties the realization gradually dawns that the pleasure of play and the luxurious life of the student, dripping with freedom and free time, must be subordinated to the temporal and emotional demands of work.

Work becomes a fulfilling activity when the desire to learn and to succeed is driven by healthy curiosity and ambition. Abundant self-esteem is the reward for advancement in the work place and the gradual movement toward self-sufficiency. In addition, friendships are formed with others who are engaged in the same or similar work. Children play together. Young adults work together and in the process become friends.

As they meet, fall in love, and intertwine their lives, young adults begin to work for each other. The gratification derived from work is enormously intensified when children appear. With their presence mothers and fathers double their efforts to provide a bountiful present and secure future for their offspring.

While all of this is occurring, slowly but surely, work begins to permeate the deepest recesses of the psyche, becoming an integral part of one’s identity, often a source of pleasure, even of security because of the nurturing aspects of its familiar routines. For some lucky ones there are moments, even days, when work becomes a preferred activity, replacing play and even relationships as a significant source of pleasure. Love, work and play—as young adulthood progresses, work becomes elevated to equal status with the other two, completing the triumvirate of activities and relationships which produce lasting adult happiness and fulfillment.

Midlife workers are at the top of the heap. Capable, accomplished, and powerful, they are reaping the rewards of years of effort during which skills were mastered and seniority earned. For these individuals the narcissistic gratifications emanating from work may be considerable. A stable work situation may compensate for the painful realities of life related to aging, parental death, the turmoil surrounding having adolescent and young adult children and the crush of responsibility related to being in the midst of three or four generations. On occasion work may become the main source of emotional sustenance and stability, a refuge from doubts, debt and difficult relationships

Relationships with younger co-workers stir up considerable ambivalence because of the recognition that educating the next generation is the means of one’s replacement. For those with self-confidence and sources of fulfillment outside the workplace, the anger at and envy of promising subordinates is not acted on to any significant degree. Instead, the fantasies and feelings are recognized and processed at a mental level, often sublimated into generativity, Erik Erikson’s term for caring for the next generation.

Thoughts of retiring are frequently blotted out by those at the peak of their prowess, but prospects for happiness in later life are greatly enhanced by the ability to take that searing look into the future, to anticipate and to plan. Retirement is clearly not for everyone. For some it does bring true happiness and fulfillment. For others, including many therapists, work can remain a sustaining activity well into late adulthood.

Play Playing peek-a-boo, hopscotch or football, listening to rock and roll, Sondheim or Sebelius; reading romance novels or watching a Shakespearian play—what do they all have in common? All are expressions of one of the most ubiquitous and intriguing human activities—play. Psychoanalytic theory teaches us that play is not random, carefree action, free from the psychic restraints of more mundane human pursuits. Like all other thought and behavior it is molded by the forces of the mind and the environment into nearly endless forms which fascinate us from shortly after birth until the end of life and bring us much pleasure, happiness and relief of tension; thus its inclusion, along with work, as one of the four essentials for happiness and fulfillment.

In a brilliant study of children’s play, psychoanalyst, Robert Waelder (1932), determined that children play so incessantly because they have to, not because they want to; because their minds are not fully developed and thus they are not easily able to understand or integrate the multitude of new ideas, situations and various forms of stimulation which they encounter every day. Thus, children live in a state of “traumatic stimulation.” In their play they attempt to master those experiences that are too overwhelming to be integrated in one fell swoop. Two decades later psychoanalyst Lilli Peller (1954) expanded Waelder’s ideas, relating the particular forms of children’s play to phase-specific developmental challenges. In other words, play will be different at different ages because of gradually increasing levels of mental sophistication and the need to address new challenges that arise as the developmental stages of childhood are traversed.

But what of adults? Better able to meet the challenges of everyday living, they have less need to play but play for the same reasons that children do; namely to deal with the stresses, conflicts and developmental challenges of adult life. Psychoanalyst Mortimer Ostow (1987) suggested that play provides, not for the unrestrained pursuit of pleasure, but rather for an exposure to realistic or realistic-like challenges, the overcoming of which relaxes tension and replaces it with pleasure. By providing a mechanism for the reduction of stress and the mastery of traumatic experience, play becomes a means of pushing the individual toward new levels of mental and physical competence. Play in adulthood, like that in childhood, consists of both thought and action and provides both pleasure and fulfillment because it is free of significant negative consequences and can be terminated at will.

In a 1993 paper on Play in Adulthood, I described four levels of play, covering the life cycle from infancy through adulthood. Only Levels III and IV are relevant to our discussion today. Level III play, which could be subtitled learning the games of your culture, occurs for the first time during the ages of 6 and 11 because children in this age group are increasingly capable of a variety of complicated motor skills, have the ability to read and write, have independent peer relationships, and have the capacity to adhere consistently to rules and tolerate frustration. Once the capacity for Level III play emerges, it continues to be used throughout life. Although the games of any culture continue to be played throughout life, the underlying developmental themes and conflicts that energize the play change dramatically from developmental phase to developmental phase. When as adults Argentinians watch Boca Junior battle River Plate they are using a form of play first learned in latency.

But my main focus in this presentation on the essential components of happiness and fulfillment is best exemplified by Level IV play, which is mental play, the form we use continually throughout our adult lives to bring the relief of tension, momentary pleasure, and I must add, the false illusion that we have control of this life and our place in it.

Watching and Listening: Spectator Play When Grandpa takes his Grandson to a soccer match they both cheer every goal, both hard at work resolving developmental conflicts. Through identification with the players on the field, freckle-faced grandson is dealing with issues such as competitiveness and sexual identity. At the same time, sixty five year old Grandpa, also through identification with the players on the field, is mourning for his lost body of youth and coming to terms with success or failure in his chosen fields of endeavor, now that he no longer has the abundant future still available to the younger man playing in the match. Nurtured by their play and each other, when the game is over, the score soon forgotten, both Grandson and Grandpa return to the “real” world.

Listening to music is another extremely common form of play. Highly evocative and capable of stimulating a wide variety of sexual and aggressive fantasies, its ethereal, non-tangible nature is consistent with the abstract nature of Level IV play. From hard rock to Haydn, the endless variety of musical expression enhances its developmental usefulness to individuals of all ages.

Writing a novel or a play is another form of play that brings great pleasure to both author and reader as together they creat an imaginary world of fantasy. Stimulated by the author’s creation, the reader can revel, without fear of discovery or recrimination, in whatever sexual or aggressive fantasies he or she wishes. Unlike the child who is not primarily interested in communication, the author must take into consideration the effect of his or her creation on the audience, filtering fantasies through the organizing and critical influences of judgment and experience. By so doing, the author blends play with work, a blurring of boundaries that occurs frequently in adulthood. On the other hand, the playgoers or readers, who have no responsibility for the creative work, are closer to pure play as they sit in their seats, keep their mental and emotional responses to themselves, and experience a brief respite from the relentless pressures of work and reality.

Thus, it is clear that work and play are essential activities that help grown-ups deal with the huge responsibilities of adulthood and experience pleasure in the process. Work provides the means of caring for one’s self and loved ones. Play provides a safety valve from the pressure cooker of responsibility and furnishes an outlet for the powerful emotions generated therein. In the world of play and make-believe time stands still, fantasy dominates reality and the player is in control, if only for a moment or two.

Wow Moments! And now to the last component, and certainly the most purely enjoyable one, of my list of ingredients for happiness and fulfillment. I chose the term Wow Moments! in an attempt to describe in words the feeling of elation that accompanies the awareness, which hopefully occurs many times each day, that life is often truly wonderful, endlessly interesting and full of beauty. Such moments of elation are obviously highly individual and vary enormously from person to person.

Paradoxically as it may seem, the ability to appreciate how stunningly wonderful life can be is based on the realization that nothing lasts forever, that change is a constant in life, and that the sense of elation experienced during Wow Moments! are transitory, like life itself. Although such moments can occur in childhood as well as adulthood, the awareness of the transient nature of all things, and therefore Wow Moments!, is experienced most fully in middle and late adulthood.

Freud comments on the subject are particularly relevant to our discussion. In his paper “On Transience” (19161 {1915}) written during the First World War, Freud’s attention was drawn to thoughts about loss and impermanence. Speaking to a friend who was a poet, he noted: “The poet admired the beauty of the scene around us but felt no joy in it. He was disturbed by the thought that all this beauty was fated to extinction, that it would vanish when winter came, like all human beauty and all the beauty and splendour that men have created or may create. All that he would otherwise have loved and admired seemed to him to be shorn of its worth by the transience which was its doom.” (p. 305).

It is precisely this gradually growing, adult awareness that time is limited and that all things and all beings will eventually be destroyed, or die, that makes Wow Moments! so wonderful, so full of elation—and so transient.

What follows are some personal Wow Moments! which make my life extraordinary every day. I’m sure each of you has many of your own. The sense of exhilaration while taking my first breath of pure air on a sunlit morning beneath a cloudless sky. The sense of deep satisfaction I experienced when a young adult patient who was terrified of commitment because of a childhood filled with abuse and abandonment, after nearly four years of analytic work, was able to overcome his fear of intimacy and ask his girl friend to marry him. The feeling of physical intactness and competence after a hard workout at the gym or after watching an all too infrequent perfect iron shot of mine land on the middle of the green on the golf course. The sense of awe created while observing two loving parents care for their young children; the almost palpable experience of watching the next generation being created within the crucible of the nuclear family. The transcendental joy of listening to the last movement of Mahler’s second symphony or Mozart’s clarinet concerto or Gershwin’s rhapsody in blue. The thrill of attending a world Cup final and knowing that I’m sharing the experience with more than a billion other human being at the same moment. The tingling up and down my spine as I listen to soprano, Marilyn Horne, sing Donizetti. The sense of wonder and connection with past generations and cultures while visiting Machu Pichu, Easter Island, Egypt and Ankor Wat. The recognition of my insignificant place in the Universe when standing in the reflected light of the Milky Way on a clear, dark night in the California desert; but realizing at the same time, that in some incomprehensible way, I’m part of it all.

Conclusion So there you have it, one man’s attempt to understand the incomprehensible. I’ve tried to explain what I think I understand about human existence. I’ve learned to accept and not ruminate about what for me are the unanswerable questions such as is there life after death and how was the universe created.​ I encourage you, my fellow human beings, to look inside yourselves for your own answers to the meaning of human existence. Hopefully each of you will formulate a philosophy of life that will bring you, and those you love, happiness and fulfillment.